


a mimir two mimir we mimir you mimir

by feralphoenix



Series: go the fuck to mimir (and other bedtime stories) [1]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alexithymia, Colonialism, Depersonalization, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Handcuffed Together, No one is Happy with This, Past Child Abuse, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26298400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Wherein the Radiance tries to put a fussy baby to bed.
Relationships: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & The Radiance
Series: go the fuck to mimir (and other bedtime stories) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960993
Comments: 35
Kudos: 111





	a mimir two mimir we mimir you mimir

**Author's Note:**

> _(An improbable fiction_ – All this was prepared for me. All this was set in motion long ago. I live in someone else’s future.)
> 
> we owe "two mimir" to the genius of twitter user @mmoriqomm, who came up with it after learning about the spanish meme _a mimir_. their gallery's real cute, give them a visit.
> 
> **detailed warnings for this fic include:** mainly, blanket warning for discussion of the pale king's bullshit (violent imperialism, genocide, real-life historical parallel kidnapping as discussed in [my previous hk work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25357249), brainwashing/mind control, child murder, nonsexual child grooming). we also have canon-typical sexual references (i mean. the white lady is here and that's her Whole Brand), as well as small amounts of canon-typical violence and body horror. there's some glancing mention of height dysphoria too.
> 
> **one final note before we get started:** this isn't meant to be a particularly comfortable fic to read. it's meant to be challenging. the topics hollow knight canon discusses are uncomfortable and it's not subtle about them if you've got all the lore. this story is A Whole Lot Less Subtle. i ask that if you choose to read it, and if you need help processing the ideas presented, please go to a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor for that help. i would also like to gently request that if you're from a christian cultural upbringing, please be respectful in any comments. thanks

_You fall. It is unlike any fall you have ever known._

_To call it a fall is perhaps inaccurate: The sensation is too slow, too soft, gentle and cool. You would recognize it as the feel of being tucked into bed if you had ever experienced that, but you have not, and so you are left to grope in the dark to describe and categorize with too-scant vocabulary. This is not so unusual. Yours has always been a narrow world._

_The floor beneath your claws is smooth, cold, familiar. You step forward and into the light, breathe in the air of the White Palace so different from that of the Ancient Basin: Perfumed by the faint sweetness of the white fruit, the sharp savory of the silver leaf._

_Your mind drinks in the surroundings whilst your body ventures forward step by step with surety. In the distance royal retainers clad all in white sit upon benches and chairs and speak softly amongst themselves, their voices reduced to meaningless babble between the acoustics of white stone and empty air. Many turn to look at you but none stand to make full obeisance. Appropriate, as you are not attending their lord and master. Neither do any rise and leave to report that you walk alone. Likely they believe you to do so upon some order of the king’s, and so let you pass unmolested._

_Hazily you recall you have no such order. But this is not so very unusual, here. The certainty runs counter to what you expect but it is also unshakable. Therefore you must have no need to question. Onwards you walk, then trot, steady and footsure._

_As you rise through the stories of the palace you catch glimpses of familiar bugs: The tower Watcher from the raining city you rarely saw yourself, seated near the railing beneath a silver-ivy-latticed gazebo. Upon the chaise opposite him is the jelly Teacher, with one of her assistants. Much like the retainers their voices are too soft and distant for you to derive sense from their talk, but as you pass the assistant raises one claw to wave to you. Bugs who perform such a gesture to others always seek a response, you have observed. It is outside your appointed role to do so, however, and would likely raise furor throughout the kingdom were you to._

_Therefore in compromise you incline your head with such subtlety that even one watching closely should doubt that you ever moved at all._

_You take the lift, knowing the king shall be at the palace’s highest floor somewhere—perhaps the throne room or a balcony looking out upon whatever new obstacle course he has concocted. He so loves to make them, as he so loves to tinker; standing obedient at his side you have watched many an impossible schematic take shape from nothing beneath his clever claws. Actually navigating each, as he would order you to do upon completion, was at that point in your life the most terrible ordeal you had ever known. Still you persevere until you can complete them easily, first for his delight as his traps catch you and then for his satisfaction when your performance makes it to his standard._

_More so than any of the king’s other tools and toys, you are built to excel. To answer his expectations is everything._

_Arrived at the very crown of the palace, you duck through a soft veil of silver leaves light as Weaver-silk upon your tender shell. Far in the distance you hear the soft voice of the king, and overlapping with his in easy rhythms another voice, a higher voice; a dry proud familiar voice, steel but gentle._

_Something moves deep within your shell, a quickening fluttering sensation. Your legs burn as though urging you to hasten, to find who speaks with your liege and sire._

_Arrival from the direction of the obstacle course arrests you in place, and the fluttering sensation soars through your small breast._

_There are many of them: Small, animated, playful, scampering. Their cloaks are less pristine than yours in some cases, the horns upon their masks are all different—here a brief pair to either side of the head, there an uneven twisted distribution like branches, one with a central horn like a fighting beetle, one with gently drooping horns like the lop ears of some soft mammal. All of them just your size, with little black bodies the same as yours. Upon seeing you some wave their claws—one or both—as though to gesture you to join them. The featureless buttons of darkness in each face are utterly without guile, and you approach them quite naturally. Kin among kin._

_One sibling that had its back to you turns, and you recognize the tattered gray of the cloak, the semicircle horns forked at the very tips._

_The fluttering, the ease are banished by cold that grips your limbs. You cannot look away from the familiar face though it churns in you—the memory of where and when you saw that face last—_

The Hollow Knight comes to with a start. Their breath stutters. Their heart batters against their carapace. Chill lingers in their spindly legs, in the gawky arms that still ache with an echo of growing pains. For a long moment they cannot recognize this body as their own. For a longer moment yet they do not recognize the dark stone upon which they lay, the scything arches carving up an endless expanse of black-clouded sky that still makes their gorge rise.

Filaments of Essence fade in and out of the air. Distant, behind the cloud cover, are the tiny white specks which the Hollow Knight only recently learned to call _stars._

“You were meant to stay asleep, you know,” says the one who taught them that word.

The Hollow Knight gathers their wayward limbs beneath them and raises their body into a crouch, tilting their head back to watch.

When she speaks to them her voice does not boom and make their ears ring, as it does when she screams. It is a very normal voice, similar to that of any other large bug; characteristic of it is a very particular tone of warmth worn thin, akin to flocked velvet rubbed off the points of a porcelain toy. It is as though she has two voices, separate—the one for conversation and the one that strains their shell to the verge of cracking.

The Radiance, the Light forgotten, floats in midair in the near distance. To their eye she still looks like nothing so much as a very large and furry moth with oddly shaped wings, but she is also a palpable weight in the fabric of the world, an older and deeper power than the Pale King they have orbited all their life. To say that she does not live up to her name here in the perpetual night is true but an oversimplification nonetheless. Starlight collects white along her edges, backlighting the down of her shoulders. Her eyes in her dark face glow unblinking.

Those eyes bore into them now, uncompromising gold. “Bold, to spurn my mercy. Bold and foolish.” (The Hollow Knight prickles at her implication— _bold_ suggests courage, _foolish_ willfulness. That is not how they were made. Her insistence otherwise is like grains of dirt pinched between the seams of their shell.) “I know what it is you wish. Your desires are humble, and it is appalling that such things were so out of reach to you in life. There is nothing stopping you from having that here. It would not even be in violation of your duties—I certainly can’t sneak out of your skull while you nap.”

The Hollow Knight rises slowly to their feet, still hunched over as if to do battle though they have no nail. Having _no voice to cry suffering,_ as the king made them, seems not to matter here. If there is anything they would say had they a voice, she responds to it.

(“We’re literally in your _mind,”_ the Radiance had said at one point. “Your thoughts are not difficult to pick up on, and don’t give me _no mind to think_ either because the very existence of your personal corner of the Dream Realm proves otherwise.”)

“It is not so much to ask, no,” she says to them now. “Freedom to exist as one pleases. The presence of a family. Parents. Siblings.

“Ah,” says the Radiance. Something locks in the Hollow Knight’s gut, goes rigid in the small of their back. Unless the captive Higher Being makes an overtly threatening gesture they do not think so much of their nail but presently a loneliness aches in the palm of their right claw for its cool ridged firmness.

“You are not the one that locked that door,” she says, clear, to the point, not unkind. As though explaining something to a grub, which the Hollow Knight occasionally saw occur in the palace, if from a distance.

They buck their head back in a silent hiss, claws arched, body slung low with knees bent and ready to lunge, or flee. The response is automatic, reflex, as if she has struck out with a weapon and hit a weak spot. Their pulse speeds, their vision sharpens, their middle clenches until pain cramps it.

The Radiance flaps her great wings once and spreads the gray feathers until she appears three times her true size, looming until the Hollow Knight crouches snarling to the floor. She shouts just once, a warning; with no means to fight her they drop flat to their belly. The posture strains the back of their neck. She settles, seemingly satisfied by their pose of submission. They wait and watch her for moments longer, even so.

“You are _not,”_ she repeats with barbed emphasis, “the one that locked that door. You never raised claw or weapon to your siblings, never wished harm upon them. You watched with your own eyes as the pale worm slew dozens he judged imperfect, your path was lined with the corpses of those he had already slain. You know full well that if you brought his attention to it he would have killed it, or killed you, or killed the both of you and been done with it. And I would be having this conversation with some other stupid overgrown child.”

Then, softer: “I know well that guilt is not so easily banished, not least when it has had so long to fester. But that process cannot even start unless you are told, so I tell you now, vessel: _It was not your fault.”_

Still crouched on all fours they stare at her. It is as if she has suddenly switched to speaking some other language. Her words fall meaningless on their ears.

“Perhaps you will survive to a day when you can understand this and take some comfort from that impossible wish,” the Radiance says, “but for now I can do away with that element for you if it is what you require.”

The Hollow Knight edges backwards, but not far enough to escape the reach of her wing reached down toward them. But the feathers that brush across their mask are soft and weightless, her touch careful. The tension in their limbs goes slack and they drop, vision blurring into blue-black; smooth warmth buoys them up before they can crash to the stone floor, gray silk that tickles like a summer wind.

_It would not be so for other creatures, perhaps, but to one born of Void such as you the dark is a comfort. Gently curtained away you lie relaxed against something warm, something swaying. Your small body’s weight is supported gently. Along with the sweet and savory of the palace foliage you smell something which you do not at once recognize but which is nonetheless familiar: Earthy, mayhap starchy, but also light and floral. Whatever the scent is, you have not smelled it in so long that you will bask in it for however long you are allowed to._

_Below you a voice—dry, proud, steel but gentle—sings along with the little plinks of an orgel. (Perhaps you would understand “music box” better. Ah, you do. Good.) The singing voice is just slightly off-rhythm, more noticeably off-pitch on some notes. Here the breeze’s movement is subdued but still enough to faintly stir the ornaments suspended from the ceiling, adding their toneless peals as syncopation._

_This place, of all in the palace, is host to your earliest, murkiest memories of life as a Hallownest bug. Though you were still watched carefully as if to ascertain the accuracy of the king’s judgment, when you lay in the bassinet in this room gentle hands would touch you, like so; the slightly imperfect voice would sing together with the music box as it does now. Sometimes you would be packed in with another, slightly older child while the white root and the deeplings’ queen spoke in hushed voices at a distance, or sighed against each other’s bodies, soothing against the king’s preoccupation. Your half-sibling, not sister just yet but soon, often kicked in her sleep; but she was warm._

_Let us not dwell on her too long, however._

_The footsteps of bugs come down from the little hidden passage into the great hall. “What ho!” proclaims a voice that booms, a voice you know. Along with it arrives the potent stench of manure. “Quite dark in the nursery today!”_

_“Ogrim, hush,” says a second voice, airy, equally familiar. “Can’t you see the little one’s asleep!”_

_The singing stops, replaced by a chuckle in the same voice. “Dear Isma, it’s quite all right. Presently my beloved shall call upon us and at such time the child must be woken either way.”_

_You do not hear the sounds of your sibling here in this room. Therefore she must be sleeping particularly soundly. (It transpires that your particular upbringing has not produced the most intuitive grub in the brood.)_

_“What is your business, good Knights?” the singing voice presses on._

_“We carry missive to my lady from the Queen of the Beasts,” says Isma. “But, that can wait a little longer so the little one might rest.”_

_“Verily so!” adds Ogrim, booming somewhat less. “They say His Majesty has foreseen the little hatchling’s becoming a mighty Knight one day, and a grub needs plenty of sleep to grow up hale! We’ll retire from your quarters with apology for disturbing you, great Lady. The letter can wait for after our meeting tonight.”_

_“Do find good Dryya and Ze’mer for the council,” says the singing voice. “In our togetherness there is always such joy to be had.”_

_Soft sounds of claws on the stone tile, as the kingdom’s Knights leave. Ogrim’s dung-smell lingers a little after him._

_“I can tell you feign sleep, dear child,” says the voice. Gentle tendrils with the coolness of leaves in shadow pluck you from your perch and lower you through the air. Instinct flails your stubby limbs and you cast about the dim room wildly: White tile; white grasses sprung through the cracks between; silver furnishings, silver leaf, silver fruit. Pale light spilling past the gaps in dark curtains drawn over windows across the way. The bassinet, empty: Many assumptions trip all at once and scatter understanding across the hard floors to break apart._

_The tendrils about your middle—white, glowing—set you down upon a white glowing lap of the same plantlike texture. The kind hands that people your so-distant memory hold you there upon the lap. A deep ache like unto a wound in your chest that you had long since ceased to register eases. The sensation is much like the vibration of some bowed instrument, pitch so low that it escapes your hearing despite being clearly palpable to your body._

_“More and more the world is shrouded in mist, but I need not my sight to perceive you, heart’s joy,” the voice goes on. One kind hand cradles the side of your mask; another holds your claw in a loose clasp of two wispy fingertips and thumb; a third strokes your belly, and your legs wriggle out of your control at the vulnerability of the sensation. It is not that your shell is so durable anywhere, but life among bugs and the pale king’s exacting tutelage have entrenched in you the reflex to protect what for other creatures would be your softest, most vulnerable parts. But there is no ill intent in the hands._

_Murky recollection supplies you with memory of walking through the palace at the king’s heel, retainers kneeling at all sides, claws grasping out not to capture his attention or hold him still but simply to touch him at all, to feel the brush of his robe or his tread upon them, to absorb his realness, so mindlessly devoted to him were they. To be fair to you, that is a distant cousin to the Root’s caress, though the closest you can come is still merely a—pale… shadow of her regard. If you experienced this early in life you were still too newly made to truly understand what it meant at the time, to be held as a means of expressing adoration, to be cherished, to bathe in tenderness._

_“You need not pretend at sleep, my dear child,” says the White Lady—for looking up into her face, the shining blue pools of her eyes so much clearer than you have ever seen them, you can no longer deny that it is your mother who cradles you. “For as long as we both have time and you wish to spend that time at my side, I will make certain we shall be together. There is no need for excuses when I love you so.”_

_Beyond your control your claws curl around her fingers, dig in to keep her touching you, but the deep ache has returned and grown only more acute, for you know now that this is not real and the impossibility of it seems like to rip your body open from the inside—_

The Hollow Knight jolts into wakefulness once more, gasping and wheeling. Distantly they register that though they remember falling upon their front they just sprang upright from a position on their right side, with no ache in their neck from their mask forcing their head back nor pressure in the front of their face from lying upon it. Too, they note a pinched-nerve tingling in the claws of their left hand, which makes no logical sense as they could not have lain upon it. But these little inconsistencies are eclipsed by a fiery pain all throughout their body from the dream.

“Cocksuck,” mutters the Radiance under her breath, at a distance great enough the Hollow Knight almost doesn’t hear.

(There was a time—closer to the point they were locked into the Black Egg if their reckoning is still accurate, though in the stasis their sealing has wrought that sense of time has grown vague. At first they understood precious little of the Light’s curses and she spoke in them so extensively it was much like listening to a foreign language. After some time passed she—noticed their lack of understanding. That is how they would describe it, though she has scoffed at that description as defensive and argue that their _curiosity_ became too loud to ignore.

She explained to them the technical meaning of one word and its use as a curse at the time. Gradually this formed a pattern, and spilled out such that now she appears to pay attention to whether they understand any terms she uses. This is how they came to know what _stars_ are, among other mundane things they never personally observed before their sealing.

_Cocksuck_ was a curse that required a very lengthy explanation for the Hollow Knight to understand.)

“Well, what was the matter _this_ time?” she demands. “I excised the elements of the dream that bothered you so before; what other dissatisfaction could you possibly have?”

The Radiance is very insistent upon phrasing things in terms of their so-called _likes_ and _dislikes_ and _preferences_ and _choices._ The Hollow Knight’s theory is that she does this in an attempt to needle them, perhaps over their possession of a _mind_ despite the king’s perfect plans. Continually she denigrates them by referring to them like any other bug instead of as the instrumental tool in the king’s successfully imprisoning her. It makes no sense and anyway won’t work, whatever it is she attempts to do.

Ignoring her peculiar diction as per usual, the Hollow Knight drifts back to the image of the White Lady’s face. The burning pain throughout their Void innards returns; it’s senseless to attempt to understand why. She has been dead and gone for so very long; they cannot, will not be swayed by a fantasy of her alive and well and with them.

“Is that what the pale worm told his subjects?” the Radiance says, voice dripping with disdain. The Hollow Knight raises their head to regard her. Essence softly flares and disappears between them, playing golden light across her down, flashing over the white metal of her legs. She does not flare her wings or puff up at them, but her eyes narrow slightly and though it is difficult to perceive through the fur her forehead appears slightly creased. “Of all his lies, this is perhaps the most pathetic I’ve yet heard. But I cannot deny it’s very like the craven bastard to try to pretend such a truth away.”

They do not know what she is talking about.

“The White Root lives,” she says. The Hollow Knight startles where they sit, heart constricting painfully, some automatic proprioceptive response. “It’s true. Her power has diminished some fair bit, but the worm’s former wife still lives, sequestered in her gardens and twice over a prisoner. First by her choice to deny her own nature. Then again by the doing of her own mate. The worm himself trapped her in a Void membrane no mundane bug nor Pale Being could ever hope to pass through unaided. He knows full well she is alive.”

With some difficulty they rise to their feet. Their left claw twitches and trembles as though no longer a part of their body. The Light’s words swirl and roil through them such that they feel—overfull, silent throat tight. Cloudy Void seeps minutely through their joints where their carapace segments and their breathing roughens against a sense of suffocation.

“Of course he lied,” the Radiance goes on, pitiless. “Even a thrall as powerful as his would be shaken if his worshippers knew he’d finally trespassed into a realm of cruelty even one so slavishly devoted to him as she once was could no longer bear to follow. And she _fled_ from him. Make no mistake.”

Their limbs shake. The Radiance floats closer. They back away. Perhaps she notices their reflexive retreat: She comes no nearer.

“If the White Root had not been party to all the pale worm’s prior atrocities, or if her desertion had been enough to crush his illusions of himself, I would have celebrated it. I would celebrate it still. Better yet if she had thought to steal _you_ away with her and spared us both this farce, but it appears she believed blindly as ever in the worm’s words when he proclaimed your sacrifice would save her beloved kingdom.

“Is it so difficult to understand?” she presses. “Perhaps it would be. You are not a parent; you are barely more than a hatchling yourself.”

(There is something—something _strange_ that happens in their body in response to these words. Their shell still trembles out of control and senseless pain threatens to split them apart but some faint tension down their back relaxes. They have long since concluded it is pointless to decipher why mere words debilitate them with physical sensation. This does not convince them otherwise.)

“The Root’s very nature is to propagate. Imagine then how she must have felt for the worm she loved to at last acquiesce to grant her his seed, only to turn around and plunder the fruit of her womb to further his own ambitions. Quite different, I am sure, to agree to such a plan and to actually live through having the thousands upon thousands of offspring she birthed so painfully taken from her immediately to be tinkered with and experimented on like any of the worm’s other toys. To witness the children of her body changed and rebuilt into twisted amalgams of Pale Being and of Void and then see her own beloved mate slaughter all of them but one. And all along to know the fate the pale worm planned for you.

“Of all the worm’s pawns and playthings, her fall from accomplice to victim was especially harsh. Make no mistake: I despise her, and I always will. She’s an invader, same as the worm; none know better than I how Unn suffered, suffers still, from the Root’s intrusion upon her people’s lands. She stood idly by and let him _prey on **my children.”**_

The Radiance’s voice, which has steadily grown louder through this speech, booms suddenly into a full roar. It is all the Hollow Knight can manage to hold their ground.

She takes a breath and closes her eyes, the gold in her black face folding down to narrow crescents. As they watch she cranes her head to face the distant sky.

“But I pity her too. She’s gone a little mad—no, not from my call; worry not. It is harder to reach a Higher Being than it is to reach an ordinary bug. My suspicion is that her reality is simply too cruel for her to bear. Her mind’s attempt to protect her is closer to Unn’s retreat into sleep than the way the worm would hide or destroy all inconveniences to him.

“Your mother lives, vessel. She is safe. It’s plain for anyone to see how you’ve missed her. The dream I offer you isn’t so _impossible_ as you would believe.” The Radiance stares directly at them. Presently their head has begun to ache, a light but persistent pounding. “Why is that not good enough for you?”

They are being asked a question, suddenly. They do not know what it is she wants of them: _They_ would like to ask this of _her._ And anyway there is no way they can believe what they are being told. Like as not she lies to them to create some sort of hope that she can corrupt, chip a hole in their armor she can use as leverage.

“I don’t _need_ to create some sort of weakness in you,” says the Radiance. “What reason would I have to lie?”

The king told them, told everyone that the queen is dead.

“You are very much your mother’s child,” the Radiance concludes with a sigh. “Very _well._ I’ll have you know that in addition to your mother’s child you are also a terrible brat, and I wonder sometimes why I bother.

“But let us try this yet again.”

She spins in place and vanishes in a scatter of Essence only to appear again directly before them in a flash that sends shed down everywhere, wings outstretched. Before the Hollow Knight can react, her white-gold halo flares about her body and gray feathers enfold them. Consciousness drops rapidly as their field of vision is obscured; again, they are caught gently before their body can hit the hard floor.

_You trot in the wake of the Pale King down the palace halls, struggling to keep up with him on your little legs, chin upturned ever so slightly to best watch the peaks of his high crown, the back of his head and the sway of his shoulders. And it feels_ right, _so much more right than anything else, familiarity swaddling you with ease like the warmth of many blankets._

_As is usual, he has much business to go about in his little warren, the great architectural labyrinth festooned with the queen’s left-off leaves and branches and fruit, artificially aglow with his own power despite how deep it sits underground. Worms are, they say, burrowing creatures. And the Void he so loves to toy with is in such close reach—on his own foolish head be it, if that ancient light’s bane were ever to take exception._

_But you aren’t interested in my biases, are you? And perhaps that is for the best. You never should have been plunged into such a conflict. In a fairer world—if the Pale King knew to mind his manners perhaps—your cares would still be limited to toddling after him just like this, like any adoring grub after its sire._

_Toddle on, then, adoring grub, in this world that might have been._

_Back and forth across his gleaming silver den the king’s path takes you, at a clip that never quite allows you to walk but still does not push you. He does not slow his pace when retainers crowd the hallways simply to bow and scrape, and stills his tread only briefly whenever one approaches him to speak of logistics. Such retainers expound upon the census, imports, what few exports the palace and capital city deign part with, news of the fringe kingdoms too wily to succumb to the king’s thrall. His responses skirt curtness in their brevity but each word given freely is accepted by his throng as a precious jewel. This you understand well. When you are alone with him and he speaks to himself out loud, addresses his soliloquies as if to you, it is like unto being gifted mountains of priceless treasure._

_Perhaps bored with his retainers—no, not “perhaps”; you have spent your life watching your king and you know the little tells of his attention wandering better than most—he adjourns their attentions to bring you to his courtyard. Gestures in a phalanx of his Void constructs—his Kingsmoulds? Oh, that’s hideously ostentatious—his Kingsmoulds, and has a seat upon an even more hideously ostentatious high silver chair. He inclines his head to you and his face is impassive but his eyes are beady with anticipation._

_You draw your nail._

_You are outsized and outnumbered, but well and thoroughly you have been taught. Your body, your mind know the art of nail combat, the language of violence far better than I. When you seed the field of battle with your Soul and detonate them into fireworks the spellwork is quick, competent. But not quite so single-minded as to be utilitarian. There is beauty and elegance in your magic—this much I can appreciate. Even used as a tool to destroy your control is fine and the shapes you create are lovely._

_…I do notice that a few of these spells you practice seem a… pale mimicry of my own. (No, that is_ not _intentional, but I shall not apologize for it continuing to happen. This fruit hangs so low it touches the ground.) I cannot tell if this is some strange side effect of our unfortunate mutual jailing or if the worm taught you this deliberately. If it’s the latter that’s only one more item on a long list of reasons why I shall kill him. If the former…_

_Well. No harm shall befall you here. If in reality he would register something amiss, he won’t inside your dream._

_Don’t mind me._

_Your dance ends in Soul sparks still showering through the air like grains of glass and broken Kingsmould armor strewn across the practice grounds. Their Void bodies noodle about shapelessly between the scattered bits of their containers. The panoply is grotesque and would be more so were they mortal creatures instead of constructs._

_But, “Excellent” says the Pale King and your tiny body fills to the brim with a sensation like a myriad of soap bubbles fizzing together. It is difficult to stay still. Discreetly you hop in place as you shake runny Void from the grooves in your weapon. The worm gestures for servants to come bear the broken Kingsmoulds away, and beckons to you. Back to his heel you run and you follow him as he brings up the rear of the slow processional to his workshop. There he dismisses the servants, but you are allowed to stay and watch uncomprehending as he repairs each Kingsmould nimbly—even recasting those too stretched out to resume their usual forms, so that they may inhabit fresh sets of armor._

_“Waste not,” says the Pale King. “Rather than endlessly programming fresh sets of soldiers it is expedient to whet your blade upon these that shall learn from your behavior. The same tricks shall not work on them again. You will adapt, and they will adapt, and so tempered you will be perfect.”_

_From the workshop he leads you up, up, up, to the balcony near his throne room. You stand as always at his heel while he gazes out upon his palace from upon high. His thoughts are unknowable. You would do anything, become anything for his sake, even knowing he will never favor you with more than the occasional glance._

_He does this now. Your little shell sings with it, top to toe. If it were not above your station as his tool you would step closer, cleave to your creator’s side. The well of your heart is parched and bottomless: Whenever he is satisfied with your performance it revitalizes you so._

_From within his heavy robes one pale limb stretches out, white claw extended. You freeze, scarcely breathing. The claw settles upon your head, rests there, lukewarm and near weightless between your horns._

_“Your progress as of late is very fine,” says the Pale King. His fathomless black eyes hold just the faintest hint of a smile. “I much look forward to where your growth will take you, child.”_

_Your heart might well stop. This is everything—everything to you, the purpose of your life, and yet. And yet._

_This is wrong. (Really??) It’s wrong. (Are you fucking kidding me right now?) To reject it threatens to tear your shell open from the inside, but it’s wrong. (Oh, for FUCK’S SAKE!!)_

_You press back against the light touch of the claw and ache. This isn’t real._

“For a creature that self-professes to have _no mind, no will, no feelings_ and so on, you are perhaps the most singularly picky individual I have ever met. I say this having once shared a realm with the Nightmare Heart, understand. Whatever Grimm’s reaction would be if he knew he’s been eclipsed in fussiness, it would surely be quite the spectacle.”

Surfacing into wakefulness is no less disconcerting the third time around. The Hollow Knight’s body still rings with the touch of the pale phantom. Heat flows through them: Again their palm itches for want of a weapon. The tingling sensation in their left claw remains, regardless that they lie on their right side once more. Faint pain prickles at their chest as well, though a cursory pat to the area doesn’t reveal any sort of wound.

They pull themself into a crouch and turn their head. The Radiance is just out of nail’s range from them—seated on the floor rather than floating in the air. Her unfamiliar posture gives the Hollow Knight pause: With her wings wrapped tight around her and legs likely tucked beneath her body the Light forgotten more closely resembles a poorly-wrapped ball of Weaver-silk than the terrible and majestic scourge of Hallownest. As they stare, she puffs out a sigh. Her body seems to briefly expand with her breath, the fluffy white down shifting minutely.

“You are ridiculous,” she informs them. “Your stubbornness boggles the mind. Three times now I have offered you a peaceful dream of your ideal life where all your wants and needs, your wishes and your hopes are fulfilled. Three times now you have found fault in your own perfect world and rejected it. Misplaced guilt making a happy fantasy of your siblings’ survival difficult to accept, I can understand. Denial that you’ve been lied to making it hard to bask in your mother’s love, as well. So what was the problem this time, pray tell? Any idiot could tell how desperate you are for the worm to love you, to be proud of you. Living in your mind it’s like a raw nerve. I cannot see any reason why you would turn up your nose at the dream of being given that. So explain it to me. Don’t be shy. Honest feedback will help me improve your experience.”

In that final sentence the warmth of her voice is worn very thin indeed. The Hollow Knight pays it no mind.

Her words are true. They would do anything for one gentle touch of the Pale King’s claw, for a single sentence spoken in their praise. For any gesture of kindness, to fulfill his wishes, they would crawl on their belly over broken glass for days, months, years on end with no pause to rest.

But—but that’s why. The Radiance’s version of the Pale King, who touched them as kindly as a—a father might stroke the head of his hatchling. That is not the Pale King they know. It was _wrong._ He would _never_ be so free in praise. The Hollow Knight is his dutiful tool. Nothing more.

Serving the Pale King is—is. They would do anything for him. Anything, knowing such a small kindness is so impossibly distant as the ends of the world. Even so they will strive for it, for such a little word or gesture. So valuable it would make their whole existence worth it.

The Pale King would not give away something so precious so _easily._ Not like a, a father giving a child a trinket. He _could not,_ and still be the king they serve.

“That’s sick,” the Radiance says.

The Hollow Knight looks to her again. As they watch she unwraps her wings from her body and stretches them up as though to scrape the clouds with the tips of her feathers, her white down bristled into uneven spikelike clumps. She heaves herself into the air with her shoulders, legs flashing like scissor blades before she brings them together. It should be awkward and ungainly but their body draws down to the ground instinctively to see it, crouched on all fours as though to dodge or flee.

“That’s _sick._ He is your father. Providing affection for offspring is a parent’s _basic responsibility._ To raise you instead to welcome, to _idolize_ abuse. To see it as natural. The idea that your lot in life, that all his subjects’ lot in life is simply to suffer to further his own self-aggrandizement. It is disgusting.” Her halo of gold light snaps into being, three concentric circles and then the rays like blades, its glow searing in the gloom. “The worm’s kingdom, the very culture he created itself, all of it is rotten to the core.”

These are bold words from a creature that enslaved the minds of all bugs before the Pale King’s advent. It is only natural for his subjects to worship him, to repay him for their freedom.

The Radiance laughs.

“Enslave the minds of all bugs?” she repeats with the sharpness of fangs bared. “If I had the means to thrall creatures like that worm, if I were willing to stoop to match his methods, this would have been settled long ago. How like a Hallownest bug. Your precious _pale worm_ tells you that he epitomizes civilization, enlightenment; like any naïf you believe him unquestioning. And if he is the most _civilized_ in his cruelty—in thralling his subjects, in brainwashing innocents, in invading others’ lands to build himself a glorified _dollhouse_ to play with—then _surely_ all other peoples must be many times worse. Arrogant. Foolish.”

The Hollow Knight rises to their feet. Their left claw has gone utterly numb. Still they face her, staring directly into her eyes, upright as the Pale King taught them. What then would she call the Infection she’s released in revenge, if not enslavement?

“Oh, vessel,” says the Radiance. “Even after all this time, **you understand nothing.”**

Terrible light erupts in pillars all over the vast expanse of the dream. More terrible light still blazes forth from the Radiance’s face. The light does not touch the Hollow Knight, in fact misses them broadly, but even from a safe distance its heat is still palpable against their shell.

“MY VOICE IS THE VOICE OF MY PEOPLE AND I WILL NOT BE SILENCED. NO ATTEMPT TO COVER UP THE ATROCITIES UPON WHICH THE WORM’S KINGDOM WAS BUILT CAN HIDE THEM FOREVER. I WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN. THE SALT OF MY PEOPLE’S TEARS UPON THE EARTH STOLEN FROM THEM SHALL BE AS POISON UNTO OUR OPPRESSORS AND HALLOWNEST SHALL AT LAST KNOW OUR SUFFERING. OUR CULTURE DESTROYED. MY CHILDREN MURDERED OR BRAINWASHED, THEIR CHILDREN STOLEN AND ASSIMILATED BY FORCE. _SOVEREIGNTY WAS NOT CONCEDED AND NEVER WILL BE. OUR VOICES SHALL BE HEARD ONCE AGAIN AND THIS INJUSTICE WILL BE KNOWN BY ALL. THE MORE DESPERATELY HALLOWNEST TRIES TO DROWN US OUT THE MORE DIRE THE CONSEQUENCES SHALL BECOME. **MY LIGHT CANNOT BE SUPPRESSED.** **I WILL GO FREE, AND I SHALL FREE MY PEOPLE IF YET THEY SURVIVE, AND IF I CANNOT SAVE THEM I WILL AVENGE THEM. THE DAWN WILL BREAK ONCE MORE.”**_

It is a scream more terrible than any they have ever heard, more terrible than her wordless howling, worse by far than the invective in which she bathes their king. The Hollow Knight cannot stay standing: The sheer force of her roar forces them down upon their knee.

But: Her eyes narrow to soft crescents. She breathes in slow and exhales. The immense pressure that kept them pinned fades slowly and she stops emitting the killing light.

“It is _incredible_ to me what an impossible favor your people seem to think it is, to simply listen,” she says in the voice she uses for conversation, and the Hollow Knight recognizes from memories of other bugs that she sounds weary.

She will not attack them—she has not thus far, not even in her burst of temper; this is the obvious conclusion to draw. But the Hollow Knight remains crouched and knelt. It occurs to them very suddenly that in every dream with which the Radiance tried to sway them they were as small as they had been newly hatched, before the Pale King learned how to accelerate their growth. The tiny body, light and nimble, felt… easy to inhabit. Something beyond the faint echo of growing pains that patter through their long limbs even now. Another senseless riddle.

Why is she doing this at all? It is as she said herself—she is trapped here, prisoner in their mind and body. Putting them to sleep will not let her escape. They cannot fathom any strategic advantage it gives her to make them dream.

“I cannot be kind to you, vessel,” the Radiance says in answer to the unspoken question. “But I choose not to be cruel.”

That explains nothing.

“You cannot hold me forever,” she says simply. “No living thing could, even a living thing born of Higher Beings and stained in Void. I am the light itself, I am the truth, I am the cry of my tribe that will never be silenced lest we are heard. Your pale worm seems fond of causing problems then locking them away and pretending this solves them—but a child makes for a poor jail cell. The worm grooming you from birth to be his instrument of genocide does not make you any less a child.”

The Hollow Knight knows that they should argue with this. Yet despite how often the Radiance’s words cause reactions of pain or discomfort in their body, again her short-sighted insistence on this point provokes ease. Of course when the stupid animal of their meat is meant to respond to insult with a threat display it instead goes docile as any kingdom work-beast or maggot.

“Pure Vessel, they called you,” the Radiance continues. “I tell you now, this _purity_ of which the worm and his sycophants speak is a fairy tale, no more. It is a goal they will perpetually move out of reach no matter how you strive. It is the lure cruelly dangled forever out of your reach, a lie to keep you enslaved. To be _alive_ is to be imperfect. No living creature is without some form of flaw—this holds the same for bug, for beast, for Higher Being alike. For you, for I, for the friends of my heart Unn and Grimm, for your mother the White Root and your father the worm. In expecting _purity_ of you at all they have doomed you to failure.

“You were dispatched to hold me as the final stone rolled over my moths’ grave, but it shall be your death sentence. I cannot untangle the damned seals the worm has made of your body and the lifeblood of his Dreamers—not from inside your mind. But they will deteriorate and break eventually, because it is physically impossible for you to hold me forever.

“And I know how slow and painful a death this will be. Your body has been shaped to perform one very specific impossible function and it will attempt to do so for as long as you live. I will be free. I cannot be held. Your body will eventually fail. It has already begun to fail.

“I cannot spare you this fate, vessel. I cannot escape your grasp any other way. The worm’s hubris and his cruelty have doomed you.

“And just as I cannot be kind to you, you aren’t owed my kindness. You were created for the sole purpose of murdering me and completing the worm’s genocide of my people. He has stolen from us, subjugated us, tortured and defiled us, all in his stupid jealousy to be the only light against the dark. He is my enemy and you are his creature, the weapon in his outstretched claw, spawn of his loins. His child and heir.

“No, vessel. It is a fact that you deserve kindness. But mine is not for you to have.”

As she speaks her voice is very gentle. The Hollow Knight cannot sense the slightest drop of rancor. It is perhaps worse by far than her wrathful screaming.

She draws close to them, slow, perhaps expecting them to flee. They do not. And so she lowers her body to the ground once more, sitting as before just out of their reach.

“I cannot be kind to you,” she repeats. _“But I choose not to be cruel._ There is no need for you to suffer the slow rot of your body from the inside out. There is no need for you to die in agony. I cannot spare you death. I can’t grant you the life you should have had, the life of a normal bug surrounded by its broodmates and loved by its parents. I can’t give you this truly. All I can do for you is give you a happy dream.”

The Hollow Knight cannot look away from her eyes. She stares at them, unblinking. Her soft white body shifts with her breathing. At this distance they can clearly see the tiny movements of her down feathers puffing up then relaxing, the flexes of her gray wings like little sideways shrugs. They can recognize her intimidation tactics, her threat displays; this is neither, and therefore opaque to them.

At last she stretches out one wing to them, almost cupping the side of their mask but not quite.

“It will help if you stop fucking nitpicking every little damn thing,” says the Radiance, “just so you know.”

She touches them with the soft, soft tips of her feathers.

It is slow this time—the sinking. Though hazy they are still aware as she bears them up in her wings, adjusts their body so the weight of their head won’t injure their neck. At the last they feel the silk of a feather touch at their left shoulder, then at the middle of their chest.

They think they see the Radiance’s eyes half-shutter as if pensive.

The dream closes over the Hollow Knight’s head and they fall: Slow, soft, gentle and cool. The Light tucks them in, and they sleep.


End file.
